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$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'No more <code>minequest</code>',
	'takedown' => '2017-11-01',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2018/05/18.jpg" alt="The bike path near my place" class="framed-centred-image" width="649" height="480"/>
<section id="Minetest">
	<h2>Cancelling <code>minequest</code></h2>
	<p>
		I&apos;ve finally found the root of my difficulties with <code>minequest</code> development.
		I&apos;m trying to add a major new feature without drastically altering gameplay.
		This is an oxymoron though.
		It simply isn&apos;t possible.
		There&apos;s nothing wrong with what <code>minequest</code> would turn Minetest into, but I mostly like Minetest for how it already is.
		There are certainly some things that need changing, but <code>minequest</code> has no real place on my server.
		I&apos;m done developing it.
		This time, probably for good.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="swamp">
	<h2>Swamp coolers</h2>
	<p>
		Management brought in a couple huge, rented swamp coolers today.
		These things take water, so maybe that&apos;s what they thought that humidifier was.
		If they thought it was a swamp cooler, it&apos;d explain what they thought the water tank was for.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="Windows">
	<h2>Fritz</h2>
	<p>
		Our new registers that we&apos;ve been using over the past while run Windows.
		And Windows was on the fritz all throughout the store today.
		We ended up unable to use the registers at all for a good while, instead having to record what people had bought on paper to enter later.
		The worst part was that we had no way to accept cards at all.
		We had to turn away many of our customers, who aren&apos;t used to carrying cash.
		Squid, I hate Windows.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="drudgery">
	<h2>Drudgery</h2>
	<p>
		My discussion post for the day:
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			Like a couple weeks ago, there seems to be a bug in the school&apos;s website in regards to this assignment.
			When I try to load the page using the link provided, I&apos;m shown an error message saying that the course is only available to students.
			Clearly I am a student though, and clearly I&apos;m enrolled in this course already.
			I found a copy of the report on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change&apos;s website, but if you check it out, be ready to deal one of those ridiculous CloudFlare $a[CAPTCHA] walls, as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has their website misconfigured.
		</p>
		<p>
			The report is mainly about the damage we&apos;ve done to the planet, what risks we have ahead of us because of it, and what we can do in the future to adapt to our planet&apos;s damaged state.
		</p>
		<p>
			My area seems to be vulnerable to increased risk of wildfires, which bring with them a barrage of problems.
			They destroy habitats and kill people (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2014).
			This doesn&apos;t surprise me at all.
			The report groups my whole continent as a region, so my whole life, I&apos;ve been here in this region.
			Not too long ago, I lived out in a small coastal city.
			It was terrible, but that aside, I often saw one of those fire danger signs with the arrows that the forest service moves to point at the current colour-coded fire danger level.
			It was always in the orange or red when I saw it.
			I haven&apos;t seen one of those arrows point to the green zone in ages.
		</p>
		<p>
			The next issue we have is heat-related human mortality (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2014).
			Again, no surprise there.
			It didn&apos;t used to be this way, but for the past decade or so, the summers have been beastly hot and the winters dreadfully cold.
			What surprises me is that high heats are explicitly mentioned, but low temperatures aren&apos;t mentioned at all.
			I would think people would be dying from both extremes when they hit.
		</p>
		<p>
			Additionally, coastal floods are mentioned as being an issue (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2014).
			No surprise there.
			We&apos;re melting our ice caps.
			Likely due to buoyancy or something, the ice caps have been sitting raised up out of the ocean.
			When we melt them, they lose their ability to retain their shape, and the water falls to the ocean.
			Where do we <strong>*think*</strong> all that water&apos;s going to go?
			Ocean levels are rising, and it&apos;s the lowlands closet to the ocean that&apos;s taking on water as it overflows its previous limits.
		</p>
		<p>
			Also, precipitation patterns are changing (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2014).
			That doesn&apos;t surprise me in the least.
			However, some of the effects of that issue are a bit unexpected.
			Some areas are having difficulty getting the clean water they need, while in other places, the strange weather is causing flooding and landslides.
		</p>
		<p>
			Climate change is messing with our food production, too (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2014).
			Again, not surprising.
			We consume other life forms to survive.
			Salt is a rock, but just about everything else we eat is something we killed, be it a plant, fungi, or animal.
			I guess we also eat microbes such as yeast as well, which we don&apos;t always kill before eating, but it&apos;s still living things.
			Climate change is screwing with ecosystems and killing things off.
			There&apos;s no reason it would selectively not kill of the things we were planning to kill ourselves and eat.
			Of course we&apos;re losing our food supply.
			That which isn&apos;t outright dying isn&apos;t doing as well as before, ether.
			Food quality, as well as quantity, is diminishing.
		</p>
		<p>
			Lastly, vector-borne diseases are on the rise (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2014).
			It surprised me when I first started hearing about it, but it doesn&apos;t surprise me today.
			Climate change is killing so much that we don&apos;t often stop to think about organisms that <strong>*thrive*</strong> because of it.
			For example, my sister used to work in a lab trying to find new ways of treating malaria, spread by mosquitoes habitat ranges increased by our altered climate.
		</p>
		<p>
			Prescribed burning and planting of resilient vegetation is mentioned as an adaption for dealing with fires.
			The idea behind prescribed burning is that you intentionally start a fire to burn away the at-risk-of-burning stuff, but since you started it yourself, you can first make preparations, then keep a close watch on it to make sure the fire stays under control.
			Later, when a wildfire would have normally broken out, there won&apos;t be enough fuel to sustain it, so it won&apos;t get hot enough to start burning the less-risky stuff.
			The fire ends before it does any major damage.
			Air conditioning is mentioned as an adaptation for dealing with the rising heat-related death count.
			To combat flooding, a proposed adaptation is conservation of wetlands and better land management.
		</p>
		<p>
			Of these, conservation of wetlands seems like the most long-term strategy, making it the most important.
			The air conditioning idea&apos;s probably the worst, as the air conditioners may cool the air in the home, but they&apos;re likely adding to the greenhouse gas problem (depending on how green the power they run on is), causing more long-term damage.
			However, it&apos;s worth mentioning that these strategies treat different symptoms of the problem.
			Treating only one symptom and leaving the rest is a pretty bad idea, no?
			We&apos;re probably going to need all three strategies in place, along with many others, such as green energy production.
		</p>
		<p>
			Lowering my impact on climate change isn&apos;t easy.
			I&apos;ve already lowered it almost as far as is feasible.
			I don&apos;t drive a motor vehicle; I bike everywhere, even when I need to get to the next city over.
			I don&apos;t even leave this two-city area; it&apos;s just not feasible.
			I live in an area that uses hydroelectric power, so I&apos;m not burning fossil fuels when I flip a light switch, and besides that, I only use my lights at night.
			I use sunlight instead during the day.
			I don&apos;t heat my home.
			I guess I did heat my home when I was recovering from surgery, as my body wasn&apos;t doing too well fighting off the cold <strong>*and*</strong> trying to heal, but that was an extenuating circumstance.
			Come to think of it, I only have five devices that plug into the walls, too.
			I don&apos;t have a bunch of electricity-hungry things in use.
			I have my stove and my refrigerator; they consume the most power, but I don;t think I should go without perishable/cooked food.
			I have my microwave and toaster, which both remain unplugged for days at a time (moths sometimes, in the case of the microwave).
			And finally, my laptop, which gets me through school and life.
			Actually, come to think of it, I also have a sixth item: the battery charger for my dildo.
			But I&apos;m not giving that one up either.
			(Though it&apos;s not for environmental reasons, I don&apos;t even have a television or a telephone.
			I&apos;m not kidding when I say I don&apos;t have many electrical devices!)
			I&apos;m also an herbivore.
			It&apos;s been shown that plant-based diets have a highly reduced impact on the environment.
			I get all my clothing and most of my other non-food items second hand.
			What else can I even do?
		</p>
		<p>
			I tried looking up lists of ways to reduce impact, tut they were hilarious in that they mentioned only things I&apos;d already covered, things that don&apos;t apply to me (such as returning egg cartons, when eggs aren&apos;t a part of my plant-based diet), and things I just do without thinking.
			I never get those stupid plastic bags at the grocery store; I always just put everything in my backpack.
			And bottled water?
			It&apos;s both expensive and inconvenient.
			I have access to more tap water from my pipes than I&apos;ll <strong>*ever*</strong> drink, and I don&apos;t have to lug it home on my bike!
			A few sites recommended buying in bulk to reduce packaging material; I already do that, though admittedly I do it to reduce monetary cost.
			I&apos;m not thinking about the environment when I buy the jumbo can of beans instead of the five small cans of beans.
			Disposable straws were mentioned as another thing to avoid, but I don&apos;t use straws at all.
			A tap-water-filled juice bottle doesn&apos;t need a straw, and doesn&apos;t spill in my backpack.
			Other ideas presented involved repurposing your child&apos;s art (I will never have children), not printing your photographs (I can&apos;t recall ever printing one of my photos in my entire life), and packing a lunch that doesn&apos;t include trash (um, why would I want to use sandwich bags and such when I have reusable sandwich boxes?).
		</p>
		<p>
			I guess one thing I could do is find a small, soft towel to bring to work.
			I have a job that involves a lot of hand-washing, and we use paper towels to dry off with.
			I could also hang dry my laundry.
			I live upstairs in an apartment complex, so I don&apos;t have anywhere to hang a drying rope, but I could hang clothing in my shower to drip dry.
		</p>
		<div class="APA_references">
			<h3>References:</h3>
			<p>
				Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (2014). Attention Required! | Cloudflare. Retrieved from <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/syr/SYR_AR5_FINAL_full_wcover.pdf"><code>https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/syr/SYR_AR5_FINAL_full_wcover.pdf</code></a>
			</p>
		</div>
	</blockquote>
</section>
END
);
